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<blockquote data-quote="Goumindong" data-source="post: 4720593" data-attributes="member: 70874">Consider ignoring all fluff and names. Look at the powers and classes entirely mechanically and then justify the powers with whatever background you want from there.For the most part, power names and fluff serves to anchor the mechanics to an idea in your head. The reason this is done is because most people have an easier time relating to the common fantasy tropes. I.E. Clerics heal, Wizards throw fireballs, fighters hit things with axes, etc. But at the end of the day, all a cleric is is a system of choices that a player makes within the tactical framework of the game.DnD has this funky &quot;if its in DnD its in 'this campaign setting'&quot; thing going on. And while that makes sense for the general DnD(I.E. living realms, most games in common fantasy troped worlds) because it gives everyone an idea of what is happening in most games they might find(increasing the network effect), it might not work for your specific game. In which case you should just abandon all the fluff.That being said, the &quot;points of light&quot; idea is very handy for a system to abandon that fluff. &quot;Points of Light&quot; basically says that stuff is unknown until the DM makes it known. In this case we can expand that to the players. You don't need to formulate a system for the entire system, you just have to say to the players &quot;you need to create your own fluff for whatever class you choose that fits with your power source&quot;. They will go and make characters that do that. E.G. they might be a &quot;black&quot; cleric who uses the warlock or wizard class template. All they have to do is realize that any time the game says &quot;arcane&quot; it means &quot;Black Diving Magic&quot; or whatever.That will take a lot of the work of creating a system off of you, and just leave the parts that you don't need undefined while making everyone more happy than they would be(since they get to decide what they do and how they justify it, giving them a bit more flexibility with their class and power choices)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Goumindong, post: 4720593, member: 70874"] Consider ignoring all fluff and names. Look at the powers and classes entirely mechanically and then justify the powers with whatever background you want from there. For the most part, power names and fluff serves to anchor the mechanics to an idea in your head. The reason this is done is because most people have an easier time relating to the common fantasy tropes. I.E. Clerics heal, Wizards throw fireballs, fighters hit things with axes, etc. But at the end of the day, all a cleric is is a system of choices that a player makes within the tactical framework of the game. DnD has this funky "if its in DnD its in 'this campaign setting'" thing going on. And while that makes sense for the general DnD(I.E. living realms, most games in common fantasy troped worlds) because it gives everyone an idea of what is happening in most games they might find(increasing the network effect), it might not work for your specific game. In which case you should just abandon all the fluff. That being said, the "points of light" idea is very handy for a system to abandon that fluff. "Points of Light" basically says that stuff is unknown until the DM makes it known. In this case we can expand that to the players. You don't need to formulate a system for the entire system, you just have to say to the players "you need to create your own fluff for whatever class you choose that fits with your power source". They will go and make characters that do that. E.G. they might be a "black" cleric who uses the warlock or wizard class template. All they have to do is realize that any time the game says "arcane" it means "Black Diving Magic" or whatever. That will take a lot of the work of creating a system off of you, and just leave the parts that you don't need undefined while making everyone more happy than they would be(since they get to decide what they do and how they justify it, giving them a bit more flexibility with their class and power choices) [/QUOTE]

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